


His Mother's Face

by DragonWrites



Series: Shooting Stars: A Series of Davenport & Lup Fics [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Gen, Medical/Surgery Squick, Memory Loss, Needles, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-06 01:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15183446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonWrites/pseuds/DragonWrites
Summary: 50 years into the Mission, Captain Davenport is angry, homesick, and feeling increasingly disconnected from his past.  While he and Lup are out on a scouting mission on a war-torn world populated by robots, he's tempted to make some rash decisions.  And Lup finds herself in the unenviable position of having to save her captain from himself.





	1. What I Wouldn't Give

The fiftieth cycle started as so many others had started.  Lup saw the Light come down somewhere in the northern hemisphere of a planet with a thick, polluted atmosphere.  She grabbed Barry to help her start triangulating, knowing that this was going to be a bitch of a job considering the atmospheric conditions.  Merle left almost immediately on Parley.  Davenport had turned to him, mouth already open to say something the moment they broke through to this system, but the dwarf was already a haze of smoke.  Davenport's jaw clenched, and he turned back to the wheel.

"Okay," said Barry, not much later, "we could narrow it down to somewhere in the larger of the two northern continents.  The atmosphere is technically breathable, but it's not good for long-term health.  I recommend pulling out those old face masks from Cycle 8."  He gestured to a dark line on the simplified map in front of him, which Davenport had drawn up from the Starblaster's initial passes.  "There appears to be a lot of smoke and heat coming from this area of the map.  We, uh, think it's a war front."

Lucretia winced, looking up from her journal.  Taako's face scrunched in distaste, and Magnus's thick eyebrows pulled low.  Wars weren't uncommon in most of the planes they went to; peaceful worlds like Tesseralia were a rarity.  Still, working in the vicinity of a war zone always made things more dangerous.

"Yeah, so let's avoid that part of the map until we can get some more info," said Lup.

"I spotted a large-ish city over here, well away from the front," said Davenport.  "We'll land the Starblaster and split into teams for recon."

The city glowed under the polluted sky, its walls bristling with cannon.  Davenport decided to park the Starblaster about a day's walk away, well out of visual range of the city.  The landscape was as devastated as the sky.  The forest they'd landed in was completely dead.  Trees bleached by the sun stood like bones thrust straight into the ground.

"Maybe it's a good thing Merle didn't stick around to see this," said Lucretia, looking out the front bay windows.  "It would just break his heart."

Lup could practically feel Davenport seething from the helm.  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but his hard gaze was fixed in the direction of the distant city.

"Well," said Taako, "I for one don't wanna go anywhere near that place.  I got a bad feeling about it.  I might just check out the woods, see if I can find any signs of life.  Who wants to come with?"

Barry adjusted his glasses.  "Actually, I think I'd love to check out that city.  I'm curious about their tech—"

"I'm going to the city," said Davenport.  "Lup, you're with me.  Barry, you can go with Taako."  He picked up his travel pack and slipped his mask over his face.

"Actually, Cap," said Lup, "I can go with Taako.  Barry might be way more suited—"

"Lup, you're with me," he repeated, voice hard.  "Grab your pack, let's go."  He practically slammed the side door open and stormed down the gangway.

"Uh…" Barry began, ever insightful.

Lup sighed.  She flashed Barry an apologetic look.  "Sorry, hun," she said, and gave him a quick kiss.  "Cap'n's orders, I guess.  I'll try to keep it quick, okay?"

"He's in a fuckin' mood," said Taako.

"Obviously," said Lup.  "Don't worry, I know how to handle explosives."

 

#

 

Davenport continued to seethe in silence as they made their way down the dusty road.  The land was just as bad outside the forest as inside;  what appeared to be old cropland had gone wild, but the plants that grew there were sickly and wilted, suggesting really poor soil, acid rain, or both.  At one point they came across the ruins of a small village, which they looted for food supplies and a few weapons, including a pair of laser pistols.  Lup suspected the village had been abandoned in the war; there were blast marks on the walls of the buildings, and the once-paved streets had been torn up by war engines.  She spotted one at the edge of town, a massive tank that hadn't survived the battle.  Its sides were blown open and its primary gun turret hung askew. 

A pair of skeletons still lay crushed beneath its treads.  Lup winced.

"Pretty grim place," she remarked.

Davenport stared at the war engine, biting his lower lip.  "Let's move on," he said.

They took a break in the mid-afternoon, when the day grew too hot.  The atmosphere might be cloudy, but she suspected there were some ozone issues because the heat was awful, even this far from the equator.  Lup slipped into the shade of a cluster of dead trees, drank some water, and settled in for a nap.  Davenport sat hunched on the other side of the trees, silent and sullen.

She wondered if it was a sky thing.  Cap'nport was always a little off when he was stuck on a planet where he couldn't see the stars.  Or maybe he was just pissed at Merle for leaving so suddenly again.

Just as she started to drift off, she thought she heard him take a few hitching breaths.  It was the noise he made when he was trying not to cry.

 

#

 

She woke to the sound of laser pistols.  Immediately she launched herself to her feet, hand reaching for her wand, eyes scanning the landscape.  Davenport stood a short distance away, feet planted shoulder-width apart, arms extended as he aimed a laser pistol in front of him.  He pulled the trigger.

About a dozen yards away, an empty can that once held ready-made stew sat on an old wooden post.  His shot went wide.

"Target practice?" she asked, mildly.

"We need to be prepared," he said without looking up.  "If we run into hostile forces, I don't want to be armed with a gun I don't know how to use properly."  He took aim, fired again.  Missed.  Fired again, missed.  The can remained resolutely on the post.

"Cap, you know your aim is shit when you're angry," she said.  "Just take a deep breath and focus—"

He let out a wordless snarl and threw the pistol at the post.  It fell several yards short.

"Did that help?" she remarked.

He turned on his heel.  "Let's just fucking go," he growled.

She snatched up the discarded pistol and hurried after him.  She'd learned long ago that good ol' cool-headed Cap'nport had a secret temper that he usually kept on tight lockdown.  If something had gotten him this openly angry, it must be a doozie.  "Soooo…" she began.  "What's got you pissed this time?"

"Not now, Lup," he said.

"Then when?  In case you haven't noticed, I'm the one who's stuck with you right now."

"What, I'm not allowed be fucking angry once in a while?" he snapped.  "I'm not allowed to have a bad mood on a shitty planet without you trying to psychoanalyze me?"

She folded her arms across her chest.  "You wouldn't have brought me along unless you wanted me to help you break shit," she said.  "It's kinda my specialty.  So, whaddaya want me to break?"

He stopped and stared at her for what felt like a good minute.  "It's already broken," he said.  Then he turned away, kicking up dust as he walked down the road.

She hurried to catch up.  "Okay," she said, "that was some nicely dramatic vagueness.  Tell you what, we should reach the city by nightfall.  How about we find ourselves a tavern and have a couple of drinks.  You don't have to talk if you don't want to.  But it definitely sounds to me like you could use a drink."

He shrugged.  "Fine.  Sure."  His gaze was stuck to the city like a magnet was pulling him onward.  Slowly the city grew as they walked closer, until its spindly towers and shining walls swallowed the horizon.

 

#

 

The city of Terapolis-17 was populated mostly by robots of various shapes and sizes.  Some were humanoid, others not so much.  What few non-robots Lup saw were all humans, who moved quickly through the streets with wary, downcast gazes, as if they didn't want to linger long in the open.

Since robots didn't need to eat or drink, finding a tavern was a bitch and a half.  But at last they got directions from a harried man in a trenchcoat, who pointed them to a neon-lit doorway in a side alley.

The tavern, despite being packed with humans, was surprisingly quiet.  The place was small, lit by garish pink neon lights, its ceiling studded with small silver orbs.  Lup immediately noticed that all of the tavern's waitstaff, including the bartender, were robots.  She found a small corner table that commanded a good view of the room and was within easy reach of the door.  The atmosphere here felt muted and sullen in a way that made her skin prickle.  The robots watched everyone.  It felt like a place where potential fights would be quickly quashed, but that somehow made her feel less safe than more. 

"Greetings, organics," said a robot waiter.  It was tall and spindly, its plating was a brassy-gold color, and a circular visor like a ring orbited its head, concealing the upper half of its face.  Four arms were folded at its side.  "What consumables would you like to request?"

Lup glanced over the menu, a hologram that floated in the air over their table.  Davenport wasn't even looking at it.  "Uh, let's start with a sampler platter.  And to drink, I'll just have a cider.  Cap, they've got a surprisingly nice wine list—"

"Whiskey," he said.

Lup's eyebrows shot up.  "Uh, Cap?  You're kind of a lightweight—"

He glared at her.

"Orders processed," said the waiter.  It turned and rolled away on wheeled legs.

She sighed.  "Okay, it must really be bad, huh?  Is it our friend Johnny Voremaster 5000?"

He stared out at the muted crowd.  "Part of it, I guess," he said.

"Is it Merle?"

Davenport winced.  "Kind of?"  He shook his head.  "No, not really.  But he isn't helping."

The robot returned with their drinks, a steaming platter of what looked like fried potato wedges and breaded meats, and a plate of some surprisingly fresh-looking vegetable crudités.  Lup wondered if the robots had some sort of indoor farming operation to keep their humans fed, because this definitely didn't come from a farm outside the city.

Davenport threw back the shot of whisky in one go, and slammed the shot glass back on the table.

"Well, next cycle, we'll grab him before he Parleys and give him a good talking to," said Lup.  "Going whole cycles without our Team Weird Uncle is starting to be a bit of a drag."  She munched on a carrot stick.  The taste was bland, for all its visual appeal.  That was disappointing.

Davenport glared at his empty shot glass.  "Fucking John," he growled.  "Everyone I care about is inside him.  Aside from the six of you—"  He winced.  "Five of you."

She sighed.  "We'll get 'em back, Cap," she said.  "Not just Merle, but everyone.  I still believe that, and I'm sticking to it.  One of these days, I'm going to get those fifteen dollars back."

Her go-to joke didn't land.  Davenport continued to frown, like the expression was frozen on his face.

"Lup," he said, so quietly she could barely hear him, "even if we could…even if we did save everyone inside, what if we can't go home?"

Her hand had been halfway to one of the potato wedges, but she stopped.  "Is that what this is all about?"

Davenport didn't answer immediately.  His cheeks were already flushed red with alcohol, and his eyes were a little glassy.  Poor guy never could hold his liquor.

"Cap…?"

He said something in gnomish, a phrase that was somehow both lilting and harsh, and burst into tears.

"Oh fuck," said Lup.  She scooted her chair closer and put an arm around his shaking shoulders.  "It's okay, Cap, I'm here."  She patted him on the back.  "Just let it out, okay?"

He was rapidly dissolving into an ugly-cry the likes of which she'd never seen from her captain.  She pulled out a handkerchief and shoved it into his hand.

"He was right, you know," he moaned through his sobs.  "Fuckin' Berneti…he was right…"  He looked up at the ceiling.  "You happy to hear that, huh?!" he shouted.  "You were fuckin' right about me!"  He grabbed the shot glass and tried tossing it back again, then stared at it, blinking, when he realized it was empty.  He slammed it on the table a second time, repeating the gnomish phrase, practically spitting it out between his teeth.  Lup's gnomish was basic and extremely rusty, but she thought she picked out the word for 'mother.'

"Your companion appears to be distressed," said the robot waiter, appearing again out of the crowd.  "Are you in need of assistance?  We offer a wide array of analgesics and mood stabilizers—"

"No, we're good," said Lup quickly.  "He's just working some shit out."

"The restroom is a more appropriate location for that."

Lup smacked her forehead.  "Figure of speech.  He's fine, really."

The robot paused, its ring-visor spinning slowly.  "I will remain in stand-by mode, in case further assistance is necessary," it said.

Lup gritted her teeth.  "Ugh, fine.  Whatever.  Just…roll back a few feet, give us some space, okay?"  Her arm tightened protectively around Davenport's shoulders.  "Cap, just ignore him."

He sniffled, wiped his face with the handkerchief.  "I'm sorry, Lup," he said, his voice low and rough.  "I should be better than this…"

"No, no, it's okay," she said.  "Clearly something's been bothering you.  If you wanna talk, you can.  And if you wanna go somewhere and break shi—break stuff until you feel better, we can do that too.  I'm here for you, okay?"

He didn't say anything.  Just stared bleakly at the wall with red-rimmed eyes.

"What's that thing you said earlier, in gnomish?" she tried, after a moment had passed in silence.

"It's an insult," he said.  "It means, 'you've forgotten your mother's face.'"  He grimaced.  "That's what Berneti used to say about me.  I knew there were others, too, but he was the one who said it to my face."  He took a deep, shuddering breath.  "It's what's said about gnomes who betray their warrens or abandon their roots.  That's what he fuckin' said to me.  Accused me of pretending I was human.  As if trying to get Big Folk to take me seriously as a leader was some sort of betrayal of my family."  He made a sound that was halfway between a derisive snort and a sob.  "He was right.  I hope he's happy, floating up there with John."

Lup frowned.  "Fuck that guy.  What was he, a jealous rival?  Nosey asshole neighbor?"

"Third cousin."

"Well, fuck him and the ass he rode in on!  You're leading a mission to save all of reality.  If anything, your family should be super proud of you!"

Davenport's frown deepened.  "They were, mostly," he said.  "But Lup, that's—that's not it."  He swallowed hard, as if a stone the size of his fist were lodged in his throat.  "I…I can't remember what my mother's face looks like anymore."

Lup stared down at him.  "What?"

He squeezed his eyes shut.  "I can't picture what she looks like, Lup!"  He pressed his fingers over the bridge of his nose.  "I—I spent decades trying not to think of home, trying not to dwell on it.  It just hurt too fucking much!  I needed to focus on the mission.  And it's not like I brought a fucking, a family photo album with me!"  He was shaking now, a fresh wave of tears pouring down his flushed cheeks.  "I can't remember her face, I can't remember the names of half my aunts and uncles, I've forgotten some of the lyrics to our warren songs…"

"Shit, Cap…"

His small fingers clutched desperately at the sleeve of her red robe.  "I tried to talk to Merle about it.  He always knows what to say.  But he keeps _leaving_ and I never get a chance to say anything!  Lup, I can't keep losing him.  I can't lose any of you!  The crew, this mission…Lup, _it's all I have left._ "

"Your companion is malfunctioning," said the robot waiter.  "There appears to be unanticipated corruption in his reserve memory banks."

"Yeah, you're not helping," Lup growled.

Dav chuckled bitterly, shaking his head.  "Man, if I were a fucking robot, I wouldn't even have this problem.  Memories saved perfectly forever, wouldn't that be fuckin' nice?  What I wouldn't give for that."

The robot waiter said nothing, its visor continuing to spin.  It had no eyes, but Lup got the uneasy feeling it was watching Davenport.  After a pause, it said, "Consent for integration has been accepted.  Congratulations, organic!"  Its four arms extended, and its clamp-like hands latched onto his arms.  Before Lup could react, it had lifted Davenport bodily into the air.  "Your consciousness will be uploaded into Central Mainframe for processing, and you will be given a new robot body."

"What?"  Davenport's eyes widened.

"Put him the fuck down, NOW!"  Lup drew her wand, cursing herself for letting the captain get sloppy drunk in an unknown situation.

"Organic aggression detected," came a tinny voice from the ceiling.  She was sprayed by a strange blue fluid from above, like she was a fire that had set off a sprinkler system.  Instinctively, she fired a Scorching Ray at the robot who held Davenport.  It bounced off some sort of energy shield that appeared around it, forming like a honeycomb of bluish-green light.

Davenport's sluggish brain had finally caught up to the situation.  He tried to twist out of the robot's grip, feet kicking and tail lashing furiously, but he couldn't get free.  "What the fuck?!  Let me go!  Lup, lil' help here?!"

The robot's chest opened up and another spindly armature appeared, tipped with a needle.  "For your own safety, please refrain from struggling," said the robot.

Lup tried a Magic Missile, but the room was starting to spin and her vision went foggy as a wave of nauseous vertigo overtook her.  A few desultory sparks shot out of her wand.  She sank to her knees, chin hitting the table.  "Cap…" she moaned.  What the fuck had they sprayed her with?

"Lup?  Lup!"  She saw her captain, he was _right there_ but she couldn't get to him.  She sagged against the wall.  The last thing she saw was the robot jamming its needle into Davenport's neck, and Davenport making a strangled sort of noise before his eyes rolled back and he sagged in the robot's grip.

And then the world went dark and sweetly numb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, it's the next story in my series of Davenport & Lup adventures! This one is less quiet interpersonal drama and more action/adventure and probably the darkest of the fics I have planned for this series. I promise I will follow this up with some fluff! But for now...brace yourselves, because this one's a doozie.


	2. To See You Again

Sensation leaked back into her bit by bit.  She opened her eyes and found herself curled against a wall, half-hidden behind a table in a bar whose neon pink lights stung her eyes.  Her skin felt cool and tingly, and her eyelids were heavy as lead.

An older woman with gray hair and deep worry lines was holding out a glass of water, trying to press it to her lips.  "Drink," she said quietly.  "You'll be fine in a moment."

"Uhh?  Wha' happened?" she slurred.  Her tongue felt thick and slow, like a slug in her mouth.

"Just drink.  It'll help."

Lup allowed the cool water to slip down her throat.  "Cap…?"

The woman shook her head.  "Your friend is gone.  I'm sorry."  She glanced over her shoulder at the robot bartender, as if she worried that expressing sympathy would bring unwanted attention down on her.

Lup shivered awake.  "Gone?  Whaddaya mean, _gone?_ "  She grabbed the lip of the table and hauled herself shakily to her feet.  "Where'd they take him?  Whadid they _do_ to him?"  She looked wildly around the room, thinking that someone just _kidnapped by fucking robots_ was such an obvious cause for alarm that the patrons ought to be up in arms.  But other than a few wary side glances, nobody reacted.

"They took him to be integrated," said an older man at the woman's side.  "Probably part of Central Mainframe already."  His tone was bitter.  "For all we know, your former 'friend' is watching us right now."   He tilted his head towards the ceiling with its silver globes set at regular intervals.  Lup had thought they were strange decorations, but she realized now they were cameras.

The woman put a hand on Lup's arm.  "It's best to just forget about him," she said, in a tone that she probably intended to be sympathetic but which made Lup want to slap her out of her complacency.

She grabbed the woman's wrist.  "How long ago?  How long was I out?"

The woman wouldn't meet her eyes.  "About an hour.  Please, calm down.  Or you'll trigger the aggression sensors again!  The punishment is much harsher for a second violation."

_"Where?"_

Neither of them answered.

She bit back a scream.  She wanted to blow up every robot in this place, but she couldn't risk taking another hour-long nap.  Wherever Cap'nport was, he needed her help. 

She rushed out of the tavern into the night.  Rain had begun to fall, and the wet roads shimmered under the city's neon lights.  She pulled out her Stone of Farspeech.  "Lup to Starblaster, who's at the helm?"

"Hey," came a loud, throaty voice.  "It's me, Mags!  What's up, Lup?"

"Uh, we got a fuckin' big problem," she said.  "This city's full of robots and they've kidnapped Cap'nport.  They're planning to download his brain into their main server or some fucked up shit like that.  I've been unconscious for an hour, I'm trying to track him down now.  But I have a feeling we're gonna need a quick extraction once I find him."

"Holy shit!  I'll be there as soon as I can, Lup."

"You might wanna be careful on the approach.  We don't know what they'll perceive as a threat and try to shoot down."

"No worries!" said Mags.  "They don't call me Magnus 'Vehicle Proficiency' Burnsides for nothing!"

"Mags, dear, nobody fucking calls you that," said Lup.

"Well _I_ call me that!" he said.  "Send me the coordinates when you locate him, so I'm not flying around the city like a big silver target."

"Roger, big guy!  Lup out."  She slipped the Stone back under her robes.  She saw a human pedestrian and hoofed it across the street.  "Hey you!"

The human, a surprisingly young woman with huge, startled eyes, nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Hey, sorry to jump out at you like that, but I'm in a big hurry.  Where do humans go to get integrated?"

The young woman stared at her.  "What?"

Lup frowned.  "Integration.  Where does it happen?  I'm kind of in a big hurry."

The woman stepped backwards, raising her hands as if expecting an attack.  "I--I don't want any trouble!" she said. 

"Look, I don't want any trouble, either!  I just need to find out where it happens--"

The young woman turned and ran. 

Fuck.  What was with this town?  She ran down another street, conscious of the time she was wasting.  She did _not_ want to test out the Soul Sphere Problem on Cap'nport.

Five cycles ago, a coven of necromancers had kidnapped Lucy and stuck her soul in a crystal ball they called a Soul Sphere.  It was near the end of the cycle, so in theory Lucy would reset, but nobody was sure what would happen if her consciousness were separated from her body and trapped somewhere else when that happened.  Would she be fully restored on the Starblaster, or would they only get back an empty shell?

Nobody wanted to test the theory.  So they threw everything they had at the necromancers to get her back and restore her before the cycle ended.

She didn't want to think of what would happen if Davenport's mind were uploaded to some collective robot superconsciousness, and then downloaded into a robot body.  Maybe it would be a kickass way to spend a cycle and would end in a consequence-free reset.  But she had a bad feeling about this whole situation.  These robots weren't fucking around, and it was obvious how the local humans felt about integration.

It took her two more attempts before she found someone who would talk to her without freaking out and running away.  They pointed her to the city's Northeast Quadrant, to a building called, disconcertingly, Central Processing.  She followed their directions and found herself outside the gates of a walled courtyard.   Bright lights glowed from the first floor windows and a pair of sliding glass doors that reminded her of a sterile hospital entrance.  The rest of the building was a dark, windowless rectangle twenty stories high.

Bulky robots with dark armor and glowing red eyes sat as sentries on either side of the door.  She counted half a dozen of them, all about eight feet tall.  She pulled out her wand, calculating how many she could take down in--

A bird landed on the flat courtyard paving stones.

It burst into a poof of feathers and smoke as every sentry fired on it at once.

"Unauthorized threat detected and neutralized," all the sentries said, their voices only slightly staggered.

Okay, maybe bullrushing this place wasn't the best idea.  Shit.  What would Cap'nport do?

Well, he would advise the cautious approach.  See if there was a way he could trick himself in.  False credentials or a disguise that made it appear like he was supposed to be there.  Neither of which she had.  The only reason she could think of that any organic would come here was if they wanted to be integrated.

She followed the wall until she came to a glowing blue square of light, a sort of holo-screen hovering about an inch out of the stone.  A silver camera-sphere was embedded in the stone right above it.  "Excuse me," she said, "is this where organics come to be integrated?"

The holo-screen shifted, showing the pleasantly-smiling face of a human woman.  "Welcome to Central Processing," she said in a stilted voice.  Lup realized the woman was a computer-generated image, as her mouth moved in a mechanical way while the rest of her face was oddly stiff.  "Do you consent to integration?"

"I'm not sure, really," said Lup.  "I've been thinking about it, but I'd like to learn more first.  Is there any way I could maybe take a tour of the facility?  Learn how it works, read some pamphlets, that sort of thing."

"Please hold," said the woman.  "Processing request.  Request processed.  A concierge will be out shortly to meet you."  The holo-screen winked out.

Huh.  That seemed too easy.

The glass doors slid open and a humanoid robot, maybe about five feet tall, rolled out onto the plaza and approached the gate.  "Welcome to Central Processing," he said as the gate slid open to admit Lup.  "A fine evening, isn't it?"

"Uh, sure?" said Lup, whose shoulders were soaked from the misty rain.  She was actually surprised at how…person-like this robot sounded.  His voice carried a pleasant, natural inflection.  His upper body, plated in verdigris copper, looked very much like a short, round man in a uniform.  His face was very articulated, curved plates of metal shifting to form a smile and lift brassy eyebrows.  Below his waist, he was one big wheel.

"My name is AN-171-D, and I am a concierge robot for Central Processing.  You may call me Andy."  He waved an arm towards the glass doors, leading Lup past the now-quiescent sentries.  "I understand you have some questions about integration?"

"Uh, yeah.  Tell me, what's the process here?  Gimme a high-end view."

"Oh, it's quite exciting!" he said, rolling into a clean white lobby with a reception desk and several empty but comfortable-looking chairs for, presumably, incoming patients.  The only color in the room was a set of bright posters showing smiling, grateful humans reaching up towards triumphant-looking robots framed by beams of light.  The posters sported phrases like "Unlock Your True Potential" and "Achieve Perfection." 

"It begins with a brief and painless surgery to install a neural port directly into the top of your spine," said Andy, amiably leading her past the lobby and down a hall lined with similar recruitment posters.  "Once that is complete, your consciousness is uploaded into Central Mainframe, and your organic shell is discarded.  You will then be downloaded into a superior robot body to begin your new life!" 

He paused briefly, gesturing to a large screen cycling through images of various robot forms.  They came in all shapes and sizes, from floating eyeball-like cameras to winged, extruted forms to hulking, armor-plated warriors bristling with armaments.  "As a robot, you will no longer be hampered by the limitations of an organic form.  No longer will you need to fear illness, mental or physical frailty, emotional instability, or even death!  If your robot form needs to be retired due to damage or wear, transferring you to a new body is a snap!  And as part of Central Mainframe, you will have access to all the unlimited knowledge of those who have integrated before you!"  Andy sounded positively gleeful now, his metal fingertips tapping together.  "It is a transcendent experience," he said, the awe clear in his voice and the expression formed by his shifting face-plates.  "I still remember the day I integrated.  It was the greatest day of my life."

She opened her mouth to toss out a careless "Rad," but clamped her jaw down on the word.  She didn't want to give Andy the impression that she thought this was a good thing.  If the incident at the bar was anything to go by, the robots here had a pretty loose definition of what constituted 'consent.'  "So," she began instead, "are all robots former organics?"

Andy laughed.  "Oh, no!  Only approximately 11% of currently operational robots are formerly organic consciousnesses.  Of course, once you are part of Central Mainframe, such differences in origin are no longer relevant.  We are all One within the Great Machine."  He raised his hands like a holy man giving a sermon.

Great.  So Cap'nport was being forcibly indoctrinated into a robot cult. 

They'd come to the end of the hallway.  Another set of glass doors led to a side hallway.  Arrows lit up on the wall directed patients down the hall to a pair of swinging silver doors labeled 'Processing Room.'  Bingo.

"Well, that's interesting," she said.  "Maybe I could see the Processing Room where all this work takes place?  You know, scope it out before I make my decision?"  She set her hand on the glass doors.

Instantly, several hatches opened in the ceiling, deploying four laser rifles aimed straight at her, along with several spray nozzles in standby.

"Oh ho-ho," Andy chuckled like some annoying fantasy mall Santa Claus.  "Careful, there!  The only organics allowed through these doors are those who've already given consent for integration."

Shit.  She eyed the laser rifles.  Where were Lucy's shield spells when she needed them? 

But Davenport, if he was still being processed, was just down this hallway.  Twenty feet away, behind two pairs of doors.

"I consent to be integrated," she said.

Andy's eyes lit up, literally.  "Consent for integration has been accepted!  Congratulations on the start of your new life!"

"Rad!" she said, as the laser rifles and the spray nozzles retracted.  She reached for the glass doors a second time, and they slid open silently for her.

"We'll just need to process your ID and get you through Pre-op," said Andy, rolling behind Lup as she made a beeline straight for the Processing Room.

"Great!  My name's Greg Grimaldis, middle name 'Fucking.'"  She reached out to push open the swinging doors.

"Ah-ah, I'm afraid you'll have to wait!" said Andy, rolling between her and the door.  "Another patient is currently being integrated.  He should be done shortly."

"Sure, Andy," she said, "but I can watch, right?  Get a real close-up look at what's about to happen to me?"

The light in Andy's eyes flickered.  Clearly this wasn't a situation he'd encountered before, and he was unsure how to react.

"I mean, this other patient, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I see what happens to an organic shell he's abandoning anyway, right?"

"Well…I suppose he wouldn't mind, when you put it like that," he admitted.

"Consent accepted!" she said, and kicked open the door.

She didn't know what she was looking at.  Her eyes couldn't process it.  She stood beside Andy, dumbfounded, as the doors swung to a stop behind her.

She was standing in a homey, old-fashioned kitchen, with dark wood cabinets and a countertop lined with canisters and a painted breadbox and a wide, ceramic sink.  Everything seemed a little too short, like it was built for the smaller races.  As her eyes adjusted, she realized there were, in fact, several gnomes in the room, moving back and forth, talking in low voices, laughing, singing short phrases of melody as they chopped up vegetables and kneaded dough.  They were faintly translucent, like ghosts.

It would have been a pleasant scene, except that there was something nauseatingly _off_ about the whole thing.  There was a strange unsteadiness, as if the room couldn't quite resolve itself into completion.  Cabinet corners trailed away into fog.  The wallpaper flickered unsteadily between sage green and seafoam green and teal, with a pattern of white flowers that were sometimes roses and sometimes peonies.  And the gnomes' faces were blurred, their features shifting and never quite settling in place. 

And in the center of this running-watercolor portrait was Captain Davenport, strapped down into what looked like a massage chair she might see in a masseuse's office.  His face rested in a padded ring that threw eerie blue light on his half-lidded, glassy eyes.  Suspended from the ceiling behind him was a spindly robotic armature tipped with various needles and surgery tools, and it was doing something to the back of his exposed neck, rising and falling like a sewing machine, its bristling fingers a steady blur of motion.

Lup's stomach churned.  She clamped one hand over her mouth. 

"Ah yes," said Andy, in his cheerful voice.  "It appears they are almost finished installing the neural port.  It shouldn't be much longer, now."

"Holy shit."  The words were out before she could stop them.

Davenport grunted.  "Lup…?" he murmured.  "Izzat you?"  His speech was slurred.  His eyes opened slightly wider, but they didn't quite focus on her.

She licked her dry lips.  "Yeah, Cap, it's me," she said. 

He gave her a dopey smile.  "Heeey Lup," he said.  "Welcome t'my warren."


	3. And Take Your Smile With Me

Lup stood in the foggy, stuttering memory of Davenport's family kitchen, trying to keep her footing.  "Um, what the hell am I looking at?" she asked.  She tried focusing on the things in the room that weren't holograms.  The surgical chair, Davenport's red uniform, the silvery armature needling into his neck, all stood out stark and horrific in how real they were.  Her eyes latched onto two other real figures:  to her left was what she guessed to be a surgical robot, humanoid with six spindly arms and a head that was an array of lenses, magnifiers, and flashlights.  And in the back right corner was the four-armed waiter robot who'd kidnapped Davenport in the first place, its visor ring spinning slowly and giving it a 360-degree view of its surroundings.  Lup was beginning to suspect that it wasn't so much a waiter as a people-handler.

"Oh, nothing to be alarmed at!" said Andy, chipper as always.  "As part of Pre-op, we run an initial neural scan in order to produce a holographic environment that the patient finds soothing.  All standard procedure."

One particular gnome, an older woman with a broad smile and curly, strawberry-blond hair, paused by Davenport's chair and patted him on the shoulder, humming a few notes as she did so.  Her fingers wavered as they didn't make contact.  She moved on, her smile the only clear feature on her otherwise-blurry face.

"Ssorry 'bout the messss, Lup," Davenport slurred.  "Didn' know we were havin' frenz over…"

"It's okay, Cap, it's fine."  She took a few slow, nonthreatening steps towards her captain, keeping one eye on the other robots.  "Just stay calm, I'm gonna take care of this, okay?"

"Prolly ssshouldn' move me right now.  They're, uh…Luuup, they're in my sspine…"  He squeezed his eyes tight, grunting as the surgical armature did something she couldn't quite see from this angle.

Lup took a deep breath and turned to Andy.  "You need to stop this right now," she said, keeping her voice as level as possible to avoid triggering anti-aggression measures.  With delicate needles doing surgery in Davenport's brain, the last thing she should do was start an explosive fight right now.  And there were retractable panels in the ceiling which she suspected contained more spray nozzles.  "My friend here was drunk when he implied he wanted this, and he was in no position to offer consent.  You need to stop this surgery and sew him back up right now.  This isn't what he wants."

Andy's smile was patronizing now.  "I'm afraid I don't understand," he said.  "Consent is consent.  Once it’s given, it is binding."

"M'not _drunk_ …" said Davenport.  "They sshot me up with sumthin'…counter-…counter-whatsit the alcohol…then they sshot me up with sumthin' else…"

"Patient exhibited distress and malfunctioned upon regaining consciousness," the doctor robot piped up, its voice low and soothing and utterly without inflection.  "We applied two doses of mood stabilizer to ensure his safety during surgery."

"Y-yeah…wha' he ssaid…"

"All standard procedure," said Andy.

"Luuup…"  He was smiling.  "My body'ss aaallll…minty-fresssh…"  His wrists were strapped down to the chair arms, but his fingers waggled in a half-assed jazz hands.

"Yeah, that's great, Cap," said Lup.  To the doctor, she said, "He was distressed because he _doesn't want this._   He doesn't want to be integrated into your weird robot cult.  So sew him back up and _step off_."

"He became distressed upon seeing evidence of the failures in his reserve memory banks," said the doctor, unmoved.  Two of its six arms gestured at the wavering edge of a nearby cabinet, which kept shifting two inches to the left and back again.

"Ah yes," said Andy.  "It is a bit unusual to see this level of memory degradation in one so young.  Yet another reason to integrate, no?"  He tapped his metal temple, smiling.  "No more worrying about the failure of organic memory storage devices!"

Davenport made a small, distressed noise in the back of his throat.

"Oh, don't you worry," said Andy.  "This'll all be cleaned up when you're uploaded into Central Mainframe.  All standard procedure."

Davenport stiffened.  "…wha?"

"Your memories.  They'll be restored to full clarity.  With the full processing power of Central Mainframe, data that's been degraded can easily be repaired as your neural connections are scanned and uploaded."

Lup noticed immediately the change in Davenport's posture.  His sluggish attention was now fixed on Andy, his fingers curled tight around the ends of the arm rests.  The tip of his tail twitched restlessly.

"Cap," she said, "don't do it.  This is a bad idea."

He didn't seem to hear her.  "I can…see my mother again?" he said, his voice low and quiet. 

"Of course!" said Andy.  "There's an 82% chance your memories will be restored to full clarity.  And if anything cannot be restored, it can be algorithmically extrapolated."

Lup's fists clenched.  "Wait, so you'll fill in the gaps with fake memories?"

"Oh ho-ho, I wouldn't call it fake!"  He pointed to the wavering cabinet.  "It's a matter of estimating where things are likely to be, based on existing data.  Say, using the proportions of this room to estimate that the cabinet likely ends exactly two feet from the door.  That sort of thing."  He beamed.  "He won't be able to tell the difference!"

"Oh, so you'll fill in the blanks and then just tell him it's the real deal?  Is that what this is?  Are you gonna estimate what his relatives look like, too?  Cap, don't swallow their line!  This is a shit product and you know it."

He was blinking slowly, his eyes roving around the room.  "Eighty-two percent," he murmured.  "Those are pretty good odds…"

"Yeah, and it's a one-in-five shot you'll end up with a Fantasy-Photoshopped fake family!  You'll end up with a mom who looks like Generic Gnome Mother #15.  Is that what you want?  Is that what you, Captain Davenport, are telling me right now that you want?  Because I am pretty sure that if you were able to think properly right now, you would never allow that shit to fly."

His jaw clenched.  "You don' know what it'ss like, Lup," he said.  "It's _diff'rent_ for you..."

She frowned.  "I'm gonna let that slide because you're hopped up on whatever robot juices they pumped into you, Cap," she said.  "But you do _not_ get to tell me that.  You cannot lecture me on the value of family."

He didn't say anything.  He only grunted softly as the armature finally disconnected from his neck.  It folded up behind him, dumping its red-stained needle tips into a waste container.

Finally.  Now she just needed to find a way to disable the three robots, grab Davenport, and get the fuck out of Fantasy Dodge.

"Neural port installed successfully," said the doctor.  "Preparing for integration."  Its hand opened up, and another needle popped out.

"Wait, what the hell is that?" said Lup. 

"It is a counter-agent for the mood stabilizer," said the doctor.

"We want his system clean for the upload," Andy added.  "All standard procedure."

She bit her lip.  Much as she didn't want them pumping more things into him, a Davenport who was wide-awake and kicking was better for an escape than a sluggish Davenport who thought this was all fine and fucking dandy.  She stepped back, letting the doctor proceed.  She looked away, wincing, as the needle was jammed into her captain's neck.

Davenport shuddered when it was withdrawn.  "Ooh, brisk!"  He gave the room a dopey smile. 

"That should take about sixty seconds," said Andy.  "And then we'll proceed with integration."

"Yeeeeah…" said Davenport.  "Go for it."

"Excellent!  I'm so glad you agree."

Behind him, the armature's tip was changing, the surgical tools folding back to reveal a single shining jack. 

Lup scratched her hip, letting her hand rest near her wand.  She glanced at the brass robot, which had only been watching this entire time.  She had to make herself look like she wasn't a threat, until she was.

"Lup, it'll be fiiine," said Davenport.  "I'll go in, get my mem'ry cleaned up, and then I'll get a kickass new robot body."  His dopey smile widened.  "Yeeah…with like, a motorcycle for my lower half.  So I can go super fast all the time.  That…that'd be pretty amazing."

"Sounds rad, Cap."  Should she go for the doctor first, or for Tall, Brass, and Ominous?  Or Andy, because he was closest?

"Hey," he said to Andy, "when do I get to pick my new body?"

"Oh, you don't worry about that," said Andy.  "A new body will be chosen for you based on Central Mainframe's needs and your particular skills and talents."

"Will I get to be a motorcycle?"

Andy's eyes lit up blue.  "One moment.  Processing."  They shifted to green.  "Initial neural scan suggests strong tactical and navigational skills, along with high marks in diligence, focus, duty, mental fortitude, and a high kinesthetic intelligence."

Davenport smirked.  "I'm good at moving fast."

Lup's fingers curled around her wand.

"With these results," Andy continued, "Central Mainframe recommends you be placed in one of our mobile war engines.  You will be deployed to the front, where you will assist in the continued conquest of unauthorized organic life."

Davenport's smile faded.  "What?"

"It's quite an esteemed position!" Andy continued.  "One of great trust and responsibility."

Lup caught her captain's wide, panicked gaze.  She knew what he was thinking, because she was thinking the exact same thing.  She was picturing the enormous tank they'd passed on the road, its sides blown open on the battlefield, the bones of long-dead humans still crushed beneath its treads.

"Oh no…" Davenport murmured.  "Oh no no, gods, no…"  His voice was rising in volume and pitch.  He tried to push himself up from the chair but the restraints held him fast.  "That's not what I want!  I withdraw consent, I withdraw consent!"

"Consent is binding," said Andy in a patronizing tone.  "Why, if we let people change their minds all the time, the world would just be topsy-turvy!  We wouldn't be able to get anything _done_."

Fuck that guy.  Lup shot him first.

"Organic aggression detected!" the doctor screeched.  Lup shot a bolt of magic upwards, encasing the spray nozzle in a block of ice before it could douse her. 

Burning pain flared in her shoulder.  The brass robot had fired off a shot at her, from a laser pistol that had emerged from one of its arms.  She ducked out of the way of another blast, and another.  The bolts singed the edge of her robe.  Shit, it was fast.

"I don't wanna be a fucking _tank!_ " Davenport roared.  He was bucking against his chair, trying to pull his hands from out of the straps.  "I'm not gonna be a weapon in your fucking war-- _unh_ \--"  His words cut off in a grunt as the armature jammed the neural jack into the back of his skull.

"Beginning patient integration," said the doctor in even tones, as if nothing at all was the matter, even as it retreated behind the brass robot for protection.  "Please do not deactivate neural jack until process is complete."

Lup fired off a magic missile, but it bounced against the brass robot's shielding.  "Cap, you okay?!"  She glanced over at him, but his eyes were wide and unseeing.  "Stay with me, Cap'nport!"

"Threat detected!"  Andy, who'd been knocked over backwards from her shot, got back upright as his metal plates shifted.  His face became a blank armored carapace with a single eye, and his blackened, smoking chest opened up to reveal a small and vicious-looking cannon.  "Defense mode activated!"  The tip of the cannon glowed blue as it charged.

That was one hell of a defense mode.  She threw a fireball at him, but he rolled out of the way.  The fireball passed through a holographic cabinet and exploded against the wall.  Part of the fake kitchen wallpaper peeled away, revealing white tiles beneath.

She took a few more steps towards him, readying another attack, when her skin suddenly tingled as a spell settled over her.  Andy paused, turning his head to scan the room.  Even the brass robot, who had its gun arm extended for another shot, lifted its arm into a waiting posture instead.

Lup looked down at her hands and saw nothing.  She was invisible.  She glanced at Davenport.  He still had a thousand-yard stare, but one finger of his right hand had brushed against her cloak as she'd passed.

"Target visual lost," said the brass robot.

Perfect.  Lup stepped back several paces, took careful aim, and fired a lightning bolt directly into the barrel of Andy's cannon.

The cannon glowed and crackled.  Andy's whole body shuddered.  She knocked him back towards the brass robot with a Gust of Wind, and he slammed against its shields just as he exploded in a satisfying fireball.  She waved her wand, and the expanding flames danced expertly around Davenport.

Because if there was one thing Lup was damned good at, it was how to handle explosives.

The smoke cleared.  The brass robot's energy shield sputtered and faded completely.  Andy was nothing but a pile of scattered copper plating.  The doctor, who'd been hiding behind the brass robot's shield, was still standing, only a little singed.

"Continuing threat detected," said the brass robot.  "Switching to thermal imaging."

Oh, he wanted thermal?  She could give him something to look at.

A wave of fire poured out of her wand, engulfing the whole back half of the room, weaving around Davenport and the armature still connected to him.  She poured more fire outward until the heat of it singed her eyebrows.  She heard the doctor robot screech, she heard metal buckle and snap, she heard soft explosions beneath the roar of the flame.

She dropped the spell.  Both remaining robots were melted against the back wall, their charred inner wiring spitting sparks.  The holographic kitchen flickered in and out.  Huge swaths of it were gone now, revealing more white tile.

"Well," she said, "you know what they say about kitchens and heat."

The invisibility spell flickered out.  She crossed the room to the surgical chair.  "Hold on, Cap," she said, unbuckling the straps around his hands, legs, and torso.  She looked up at the armature, but there were no obvious buttons or switches or conveniently labeled shut-down levers.  Of course there wouldn't be.  If all these robots were linked directly to their damned Central Mainframe, there was no need for a physical interface.  The only thing on the armature that gave any information was a tiny screen displaying a progress bar. 

3%

4%

Fuck.  She grabbed the armature at a narrow point just above the jack, and tried to pull.  The armature wouldn't budge.

"Warning," said Davenport, in an eerily flat voice.  "Removing jack during integration may result in data corruption, including damage to core consciousness and permanent memory loss.  Warning.  Removing jack during integration--"

"Well, what the fuck else am I supposed to do?" she snapped. 

"—consciousness and permanent memory loss.  Warning.  Removing jack—"

5%

"Cap'nport, snap out of it!  Stay with me!"  She grabbed his shoulder and shook him.  "You're not a damned robot!"

"--core consciousness and perma--perm…Lup?  Lup, is that you?  I can't see you…"

Thank the gods.  "Yeah, Cap, it's me."  She glanced up at the progress bar, which was stuck on 5% and flashing an error.  Davenport's whole body was rigid, his teeth gritted and his fingers white-knuckled on the arm rests.  He was holding himself together through sheer willpower.

"Lup, listen carefully."  He was breathing hard.  "I cannot disengage the jack unless the process is manually terminated.  I don't have access to it yet because there's not enough of me in the system.  It doesn't recognize me as a valid ID.  But I estimate that if I integrate just a little further, say ten percent, I should be able to terminate the process and disengage safely."

"Cap, that's a shitty plan.  I mean, I like a good risk now and then, but this is gambling with your…well, _you_."

"…I know, Lup, and I'm sorry.  But we don't have time to think of something better.  The building's security forces are already heading this way.  We probably have less than a minute.  You're going to have to trust me."

She sighed.  "You know I do, Cap, even if you make me want to scream sometimes."

"Fair.  Okay, I need you to do exactly as I say.  I want you to take my hand, and squeeze my fingers as hard as you can.  Don't worry about crushing them, don't worry about hurting me.  I'll need to keep a connection to my body, and the pain will help me focus."

"Okay.  Like this?"

"Harder.  Dig your nails in, if you have to-- _fuck_."  He sucked in a breath through his teeth.  "Okay, perfect.  Okay."  He took another deep breath, like a swimmer preparing to dive.

The progress bar stopped flashing and ticked upward.  6%.

Keeping one hand tight around his, she extended the other and cast Scorching Ray on the swinging double doors, fusing them shut as well as she could.

"Hey Mags," she said into her Stone of Farspeech, "you there?"

"Where are ya, Lup?  We're in a holding pattern outside the city."

"Northeast Quadrant, there's a building called Central Processing, about 20 stories tall.  Only windows are on the first floor.  It's got a walled plaza in front of it, with about half a dozen big-ass sentry robots on guard."

"Okay, I'm heading in now.  Can you get to the roof?"

7%

"We'll try.  Cap is currently trying to get himself free, I'm on watch—"

Something struck the doors, like the pounding of a metal fist.  _"Greg Fucking Grimaldis,"_ came Andy's voice from outside the door.  "You are in violation of the Terapolis-17 Security Code.  Open up and submit to Mainframe Authority Forces."

Shit, they gave that asshole a new body already?  "Mags, I've got company.  Gotta go!"  She dropped the Stone and readied her wand.  "I'd really love to help you out, Andy," she said, "but the doors appear to be stuck!  Oh, _dern._   And I'm too much of an idiot to figure out how to open them.  So why don't you put it down in Central Mainframe's database how much I, Greg Fucking Grimaldis, am an idiot."

8% 

"Refusal to submit to Mainframe Authority Forces is punishable by death," came another, deeper robotic voice.  There was a high-pitched whirring noise, and sparks began to fly as something began slicing through the door.

9%

"Come on, Cap," she said.  "Hurry up and get out of there…"  She heard more heavy footsteps outside the door as security forces congregated in the hallway.

10%

Bingo.  "Cap, you good?"

He didn't respond.

"Cap?"  She squeezed his fingers as hard as she could.  She heard his knuckles pop.  "Cap'nport?  You there?"

More footsteps, and the grumbling of motors.  The cut-line in the door lengthened.

11%

Shit.  "Cap'nport?  You there?  Can you hear me?  Come on, come on…"

He gasped.  The armature retracted, pulling out the neural jack, and its servos wound down into silence.  He sat up, blinking, as the remaining sections of the warren kitchen flickered out and vanished.

Thank whatever gods oversaw this bitch of a planar system.  "Hey Cap," she said, "you good to go?"

He ran his fingers through his hair, still looking a little stunned, a little spacey.  He closed his eyes and nodded.  "Y-yeah," he said.  "Let's go."  He slipped out of the chair and stumbled a little, but quickly found his balance.

She slipped one of the two laser pistols into his hand, and shot a bolt of lighting at the armature once he was well clear of it.  "Fuck you, too," she said.

The cut-line in the door had almost completely formed a hole.  Davenport took two steps towards the door and stopped, eyes widening as if he'd been punched in the gut.

A ghostly gnome still stood in the room, between him and the exit.  It was the one with strawberry-blond curls and a wide smile.  She hovered for a few more seconds, flickering, and then vanished.

Davenport sucked in a hard breath through his teeth.

"Cap, you okay?"  Lup gave his shoulder a squeeze.

The door-hole was knocked inward in a sudden blast.  Andy 2.0 rolled in, already in defense mode, his chest-cannon charging for a second shot.  Lup raised her wand.

His single eye exploded from a single, perfectly-aimed shot of laser fire.

"Target visual lost, target visual lost!" Andy 2.0 cried, reaching for the smoking hole in his face.

Lup glanced over her shoulder.  Davenport's arm was extended, his hand was steady, and his expression was all business.

"Got your focus back, Cap?"  She tossed him the second pistol.

He caught it in his off-hand.  Security robots were pushing their way through the door.  They were big, hulking models, smaller than the outdoor sentries but still at least six feet tall and just as charming to look at.

"Lup," he said, "this is really bad.  We've got several dozen sentry robots between us and the Starblaster.  Our odds of getting out of this intact are very low."  He cocked the pistols and gave her that daring grin she loved to see.  "Wanna help me break some shit?"

She smiled, and her hands caught fire.  "Abra-ca- _hell yeah!_ "

She blasted the door open with a fireball, sending it crashing into the robots still waiting outside.  They activated their energy shields, but bolts of lightning shorted them out, leaving them exposed to the flurry of follow-up shots coming from her wand and Davenport's duel-wielded pistols.  Sensors and cameras exploded as Davenport took them out with a sharpshooting precision honed over half a dozen cycles.  And while they flailed sightlessly, running into walls and each other, Lup knocked them back and blew them up with waves of force and fire.

"Lup, this way!" Davenport called, running down a side hallway, bobbing and weaving to avoid incoming fire.  He opened a door.  "Emergency stairwell.  Magnus is on his way?"

She ran in after him and fused the lock shut behind her.  "Hopefully he's found us already."

"Good.  While I was in there, I took the liberty of disabling the overhead security in this stairwell."

"Damn, Cap'nport, even when you're getting your brain scrambled, you're still three steps ahead."  She looked up through the center of the coiling stairs.  "So it's safe?"

"Well, marginally saf _er_."

She cast Flight, and began to hover a few inches off the ground.  She held out her arms.  "Need a lift?"

He smirked, and leapt up onto her, throwing his arms around her neck.  "If you're going my way."

She leapt into the air, flying straight up through the center of the stairwell.  For a moment, it was just them, with the feel of air rushing past and adrenaline lighting up their veins, and the promise of a sky they couldn't yet see.  It was damned thrilling, and if it weren't for the killer robots thing, Lup would've said she was having a great time.

"Hey, Lup?"

"Yeah, Cap?"

He shifted his grip on her neck.  "Thanks for saving me.  I was…"  He winced.  "I'm sorry for all this."

"Not your fault what these robots did to you, Cap," she said gently.  "But let's save the thanks till we're safely back on the ship, okay?  And you owe me for this.  I take payment in ridiculously-oversized ice cream sundaes."

"Lup, heads up!"

She angled herself out of the central shaft and under the shelter of overhanging stairs just as a flurry of laser shots blasted down from above.  More of those armored security sentries were pouring down from the upper floors.  "Damn it, these things don't quit!"

Davenport grimaced.  "Of course not.  They only understand their orders."  He pointed down the stairs.  "Go there!  Level Fourteen." 

About half a floor down was a door with a large 14 painted on it.  She set him down and he pulled the door open.  She fused it shut behind them and turned.  They were in a dark, cavernous space (of course, no windows).  As her eyes adjusted, she leapt back and pulled out a wand at the dozens of robot figures surrounding them.

"It's okay, Lup," said Davenport, striding confidently into the room.  "This is just a spare parts storage.  None of these are connected to Central Mainframe." 

She looked again, and realized that the figures were incomplete.  Torsos without limbs, shelves of spare heads, racks of arms and wings and wheels.  "So I take it you also downloaded the building's entire layout while you were inside?"

"Of course."  He pointed to the far wall.  "We'll need to blast our way out--"

A loud banging sounded from the steel door behind them. 

"Lup, you there?"  Magnus's voice crackled over the Stone of Farspeech. 

"Yeah, Mags," she said, extending her wand.  "We can't make it to the roof.  We're blasting out on Level 14.  Should be pretty hard to miss."  And she sent a massive fireball at the wall, relishing the flowering flames as it burst outward in a shower of shattered brickwork.

Behind them, the door blasted open, and more sentries poured in.  She sent a Gust of Wind to push them back, but these were bigger than Andy, and they kept coming.

Davenport leaned out the hole in the wall.  "I see the ship!" he said, and waved.  And there it was, curving around the side of the building, silver and gleaming.

The sentries were almost on top of them, raising their arm rifles and taking aim.  "Hey Cap," she said gaily, "wanna see a new spell I've been working on?"  She flicked her wrist.  "It's a little something I call Double Chain Lightning!"  A bolt of lightning struck the lead sentry and rebounded to three others behind it, which again rebounded to the ones behind those in an expanding flare of crackling blue light. 

Their forward progress ground to a halt and they slumped forward, crackling and smoking.  And then they began to shudder, red light growing from beneath the cracks in their armor plating.

"Oh, shit," she said. 

"Uh, Lup?"

The Starblaster came streaking towards them.

She clapped Davenport on the shoulder.  "If we survive this, it's gonna look so badass!"

He looked up at her, both eyebrows raised.  He gave her a weak smile.  "At least I can never say it's boring when we hang out."

And then they both leapt towards the deck of the Starblaster, as a dozen robots exploded behind them in a fantastic fireball of furious destruction.

She hit the deck in a roll.  Davenport landed beside her, gathered himself up quickly and shouted, "Magnus! _Punch it!_ "

Through the thick glass of the helm, she heard Magnus yell, "Vehicle proficiency, _go!!_ "  The Starblaster's nose tilted upwards and it picked up speed, angling towards the city's eastern wall.

"Are you two okay?!"  It was Lucretia, helping her to her feet.  "Are you injured?"

Davenport ran towards the front of the deck.  "Nothing that can't wait," he said.  "You need to put a shield up, or the wall turrets are--"

"Captain, what happened to the back of your head?!"

" _Focus_ , Lucretia!  The wall turrets are gonna blast us out of the sky unless you put a shield around the front of the ship _right now._ "

She turned pale.  "I'll--I'll try, captain, but I'm not sure my shield can withstand that level of barrage."

He frowned.  "I know.  But you're going to have to try."

She nodded, and waved her wand.  A shimmering web of silver light encased the front of the ship, expanding and thinning as it stretched into place.

The turrets along the top of the wall began to light up.  Arcs of red and orange light barreled right towards them.  Lucretia braced herself as they struck her shield and bounced away.

The Starblaster drew closer.  Magnus was trying to get them higher in the air but the ship couldn't climb fast enough.  Hairline cracks began to form in the shield.

Suddenly, one of the turrets swung wildly and fired off a shot at the turret immediately next to it.  And then it shot the next one down the line.  It swung in the other direction, and began doing the same.

The other turrets paused in their fire, momentarily uncertain where the threat was coming from, or where to fire next.  And the Starblaster flew past overhead, and Davenport's head whipped around and he stared wide-eyed at the one rogue turret that had just saved them.

Lup followed his gaze.  "Did you plan that in advance, too?"

"N-no," he said, voice faint.  He reached up to the back of his head, tapped the neural port.  "I didn't do that.  I'm disconnected…"

She snorted.  "Maybe you left a little 'fuck you' behind when you left."

Davenport let out a long breath.  As if the adrenaline had left his body all at once, he sat down hard on the deck.  Lup sat down beside him.  He leaned against her, exhaustion clearly lining his face.

"So," she said, "you can thank me now."

He chuckled.  "Thanks, Lup.  And I _will_ get you that ice cream sundae, I promise.  I'll churn it myself if I have to."

"Oh, no!  Taako and I have that rule against you cooking for a reason!  You should stick to the easy stuff, like brewing tea and sharpshooting and outracing the Hunger like a total badass."

"All right, all right!"  He fell silent again, watching the city retreat.

Lup didn't know how integration actually worked, or what it might mean that somewhere, a fragment of Davenport had been left behind and was trying to blow up the city.  Had they just scanned his brain to make a copy, or was it some weird advanced magitech that actually sucked part of his consciousness out of his body and into their Central Mainframe?  Could Davenport even tell the difference?  If a part of you was missing, would you even notice?

Still…he seemed okay, even after having been put through the ringer and having his brain scrambled by robots.  Back to his old self, mostly.  Taking charge, kicking ass.  Keeping his sadder thoughts to himself.

"Hey," she said, "sorry about your mother."

His ears flicked.  He blinked, wiping at his eyes with the handkerchief she'd given him what felt like ages ago.  "It's all right," he said, throat tight.  "I still…have a family, don't I?"

"Yeah, Cap, you do."  She gave him a quick side-hug, and he didn't pull away.  "And look, even if your old memories get a little threadbare, that's not the end of the world.  Your family loved you and they were proud of you, and all that love and pride that shaped you, it's still _in you_.  It shaped you into the fuckin' badass person you are today, the one who's gonna help beat the Hunger and save them all.  And even if we don't get a chance to go home afterwards, they'll still be out there, loving you."

"I…guess I never thought of it like that."  He looked out towards the city again, which was now a faint glimmer on the horizon.  He touched the neural port and closed his eyes.  "Still, it was nice to see her smile again, even for a moment."

"I bet she woulda loved seeing you jump out of an exploding building onto a silver ship.  She'd be all, 'Hell yeah, that's my boy!'"

He blinked.  "Shit.  Lup, I just realized something!"  He looked up at her.  "That daring escape has probably just gone down in Central Mainframe as attributed to one Greg Grimaldis."

Lup slapped her forehead.  " _Greg Fucking Grimaldis!_ "

Davenport snorted.  And then Lup cackled.  And Lucretia, who had no idea what was going on, poor girl, just stood there looking confused.  They'd tell her later, so she could get it all down for posterity.  But for now, she grabbed her captain and pulled him down onto the deck, and they laughed until they were both red in the face and Davenport's tears could be plausibly passed off as the result of a really good joke.

"Man, Cap'nport," said Lup when she could catch her breath, "we should hang out more often."

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.  "In the words of a great and wise woman," he said, "abra-ca-hell yeah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so my hotel wireless is actually pretty decent and I had some free time, so have the final chapter a few days early! Thanks for reading <3


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